Back in 2019, I attended the Portland Retro Gaming Expo. While I was there, I picked up all the handheld Mario Kart games that came out over the years since I skipped over them when they were initially released. So I got Mario Kart Super Circuit, Mario Kart DS, and Mario Kart 7. I planned to play Mario Kart 7 first, but it already had existing save data on the game card.
When planning for a trip a while back, I found a cool little hack for safely bringing ten Nintendo Switch games with me. I have the official Nintendo Carrying Case, which only has slots for five game cards. While that might seem like a decent number for a short trip, I have the attention span of a goldfish when it comes to video games, and I wanted to bring more than that. I didn’t want to take each game’s entire case with me, and I didn’t want to keep loose cards in my bag or the mesh pocket of my carrying case. So I looked around my apartment for something that could hold a few more games.
Guitar Hero is not a game I’ve thought about for quite some time. Back in their heyday, I bought practically every Guitar Hero (and later Rock Band) game that came out. Well, except the Nintendo DS version because it looked lame, and not Guitar Hero: Metallica because fuck those guys. My inner 16-year-old still harbors resentment from when they sued Napster.
If you happened to come across the Games page linked in the footer, I thought I would quickly share my inspiration for it. I remember a while back, probably many years now, seeing a similar list that designer, developer Shaun Inman had been keeping on his website. It inspired me to keep my own list, but I started and stopped so many times and lost older ones. Shaun even wrote a blog post about why he started his, so I guess that link is kind of an inspiration Inception.
If you’re like me, you’ve no doubt accumulated a large number of games throughout the previous (still kind of weird to say that) console generation. I had a launch PlayStation 4, which only had a 500GB hard drive, and then upgraded to the PlayStation 4 Pro with 1TB. Even physical, disc-based games required massive installs and updates, so I constantly found myself running out of space. I finally decided to bite the bullet and purchase an external drive to use, and I sure am happy that I did.
I recently started playing Fantasian on Apple Arcade. It’s an incredible game from Hironobu Sakaguchi’s Mistwalker Corporation. If you haven’t played it, you definitely should. I think Apple Arcade is predominantly used on iPhones and iPads, but those who want to can get a more console-like experience with an Apple TV and controller. Since tvOS 13 released in 2019, you’ve been able to pair PlayStation 4 and Xbox One controllers to Apple TV (really any Apple device), giving you a much more familiar feel.
I personally have Apple Arcade running on a spare 4th Gen. Apple TV from 2015. It’s capable of full HD output and runs games well even though it is a bit aged at this point. To pair with it, I needed to find a suitable controller. Since I didn’t have any spare PlayStation 4 controllers, I looked at my Xbox controller stock. And now we find ourselves at the titular conundrum. How do you know which of the many Xbox One controller revisions are even compatible with Apple TV?
In 1994, Nintendo released a pair of arcade classics on Game Boy. There was a really great version of Donkey Kong and this kind of meh version of Space Invaders. Like many children in the 90s, I barely left home without my Game Boy. Some games are permanently burned in my memory, and I remember playing them over and over again, like Final Fantasy Adventure. But I found Space Invaders pretty forgettable, even though I’ve kept it all these years. Not sure what I was really expecting when I bought it as a kid. With Donkey Kong, Nintendo added a lot more content, but Space Invaders was seemingly just a straight-up port. I probably never would have played it again, but then I listened to episode 15 of the Nintendo Power Podcast.
With all the talk of digital storefronts being shut down (I’m looking at you PS3, PSP, and Vita) as well as digital games being delisted (Mario’s 35th anniversary), it got me thinking. I never owned a PlayStation Vita, but I did buy a PlayStation TV a couple of years ago. If you’ve never heard of it, PlayStation TV is basically a screen-less mini Vita that you can play with a PS3 controller and hook up to a TV with HDMI. One of the first games I purchased was Adventures of Mana. It is a 3D remake of Final Fantasy Adventure, a game I played the heck out of on my Game Boy when I was a kid. It is only available digitally on Vita and on iOS and Android.
I recently bought an AVerMedia Live Game Ultra to replace my few-year-old Elgato HD60 S. I wanted something that can pass through 4K video from current consoles like Sony’s PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s Xbox Series X. While also allowing me to downsample to record and stream in HD. And I figured it could be valuable to try out an AVerMedia product because up until now, I have primarily used Elgato. The Live Gamer Ultra captures video and audio separately, which is a bit different if you’re used to Elgato products.
I started playing Pokémon when Red and Blue released in the US in 1998. At the time, I was a sophomore in high school, playing Pokémon Red on my original Game Boy when most folks had already upgraded to a Game Boy Pocket. Something about the game hooked me. I continued playing it until I got Pokémon Gold when that released. I lost my love a little bit after Sapphire. Honestly I’m not sure I ever finished that one, but it is on my list to play soon. Then I skipped a generation and bought Pokémon Black when I got a DS Lite. I thought this was where my Pokémon journey would end, but I was wrong.